Perfect Life
by Gabriezzu
Summary: The Daroga is clear in his message: Erik will not last the night. Christine cannot let her angel die alone. Leroux-based.


Erik was dying.

As the sound of her boots against the cobblestone street filled her ears, muffled only by the ever-growing layer of white snow, and her rapid breaths condensed in a cloud of vapor before her, that was all she could think about. _Erik is dying._

Her forehead shined under the light of the street lamps from her transpiration, and her lungs burned with every hard breath her open mouth sucked in. It was the first snowfall this year, and what a night it had chosen to come: it seemed that, with her angel, a part of the beauty of the world was dying too.

And the speed with which everything faded was astounding, Christine had realized: just the morning before, the roses on her garden bloomed in a healthy scarlet, but today, by the time the sun had fallen, the last of her roses had fallen too.

She had seen those roses born, but she had not seen them die. They had left a small hole in her heart when their beauty had faded away and she had not been able to smell their fragrance one last time.

Christine had to see him one last time before those golden eyes, that had plagued her nightmares for almost a year now, closed forever. If the man that had once been the owner of her soul and heart died in the darkness of the loneliness, she would never forgive herself for having taken even that from him. 

Her trembling fingers, already going numb on the tips from the cold, took the key out of her bodice -funny how that little metal piece had never left her since the night she turned the scorpion- and uselessly tried to insert it on the keyhole. She had to try more than once before her horrible trembles allowed her to do it.  
The Persian gentleman, now lucid without the effect of the torture chamber from months ago, had been clear to Christine: Erik would not survive the night. And she knew it. A part of her, perhaps that little part in the back of her mind which she so adamantly had denied in front of Raoul so many months ago while hiding from the monster on the roof, knew it all.

Erik was dying.

She ventured down to his kingdom, fearless of the demons and the darkness, with the hope of seeing the light in the angel's eyes one last time. It had been three months since the last time she had been there, and yet her feet took her where she needed to go without a hesitation or problem. Sooner than her poor, agitated heart was prepared to, Christine found herself at the threshold of the house of the man who had made her soul soar so high, that a part of it had never returned.

She opened the door and entered the house. Her hand looked for the switch in the wall at her right. The electric light tiltilated twice before finally staying on.

The drawing room, beautiful in its simplicity, seemed almost the same at first glance. There was, however, something that bothered Christine, but she couldn't tell what was it. It took Christine more than a single moment to realize the reason: the sofa was slightly out of place; the rug was dusty, unlike any time before she had seen it; the books were no longer placed in alphabetical order; the vases in the shelves were broken and put back together. Some of them were even missing small pieces. The flowers were wittered.

It looked as if the whole room had been torned apart and then tried to put it back to how it was, but without the most minimum of care.

Christine realized, with that same pain in her heart as the last time she had stepped in that house, that that was probably what had happened to the room as much as to the owner.

Before the thought could consume her alive, she moved on. She had to find him.

As she moved down the hall –that same hall that she had seen as a prision only months before, and that now she was willingly walking through-, a sudden sound caught her attention: a small, weak cough.

 _Erik._

She was not late.

Her pace quickened, and Christine stood at the threshold of his room. The door was ajar. It was always closed.

She entered the room with her breath stuck on her chest. It was just as she remembered it: the black walls, the writing on the walls, the organ.

The coffin.

She remembered briefly the first time she had seen it. She had been terrified out of her mind, but strangely enough, the macabre object had not scared her. It had almost seemed _natural_ among all the funeral decorations, and she almost admired Erik's determination to remind himself each night of every soul's fate. Her own perturbed mind, after seeing so much illness and death –Mamma, Pappa, Pappa Valérius…-, had seen his decision of laying in the symbol of death as a bravery. She herself had dreamed of sleeping forever so many times –and almost fell pray to the blade's siren call more times than she would ever admit- that every beat of her heart was a miracle in itself, after all.

But now, as the short distance of mere meters diminished with every shaky step taken, she could barely stand the view.

"Erik," she whispered, shattering the maddening silence with her voice before forcing her eyes to lay on the man in the coffin.

The cold, bare, dead-looking visage was as ghastly as ever. The vision had not improved in the months they had spent appart and, against all possibility, only became worse; with the sickening yellow of his skin deepening, his nearly white, dehydrated lips, the sunken black orbs, and the sliding moisture over his ample forehead only making an even more terrible image of the poor, dying man.

"Erik, I'm here," Christine whispered again, her nails digging in the stone of the coffin. If it were not for the slow, almost imperceptible but very much there rise and fall of his chest, Christine would have thought her pleading useless, "please, Erik, open your eyes. I am here. I came back, as I promised you I would."

Tears of happiness bloomed on her eyes and were quickly cleaned at the sight of his unnatural, golden eyes opening so, so painfully slow.

"Christine?" Erik murmured in a voice so quiet that not even in the dead silence of the house could Christine hear it clearly. His terrible hand raised mere centimeters before falling once more to his side, in a useless attempt to look for her. His golden eyes were unfocused with the unmistakable characteristic of the moribund.

"Yes, Erik, I am here, I am here," she said, and her hands took his in hers, lowering her face to the coffin and pressing the back of his hand against her forehead, trying to give him the strength he no longer possessed through their intertwined fingers.

"My wife…" he murmured. A broken, crooked, horrible smile full of love –like the ones he always gave her- appeared on his decaying face. She had to close her eyes against the vision, against the _guilt_. "You're back…"

"Yes, Erik, I am sorry, I –"

"How was… the park, my love?"

"What?" Christine asked in disbelief. What was Erik talking about? What park?

"The park, my love…" he persisted, "you took… ah, you took the children there. Did they… have fun? Without me?"

Tears rolled down Christine's face. He was delusional. They always were at the threshold of eternity. He was beyond salvation.

The memory of her father in his own deadbed broke into her mind:

' _My child, were you in the attic, eating chocolate and having picnics with your friend? Or have you been in the fair, without me? There is not a sight more beautiful to behold than the Swedish taveling fairs,' had said the old man, seeing a little girl with a red scarf and a big smile, and not the young woman with the tears and the broke heart._

And just like she did with her dear father then, she did now with the man she had never been brave enough to love: she continued the sweet fantasy.

' _Yes, papa, I went to the fair.'_

"No, Erik," she said, her voice not breaking under the pressure of her tears, just like he had taught her, "they did not have fun, because you were not there. We m-missed you."

' _Mrs. Nilson says… she says that she is eager to hear us play again, papa.'_

He smiled so weakly that her heart shuddered in pain.

"I missed you too," Erik said, "do you know that I love you? That I love our children?"

His mellifluous voice had been broken, shattered, and in its place a terrible replacement had been left. It broke her heart that even the only beauty he ever possessed, his sharp mind and his heavenly voice, had been taken from him in his last moments.

' _Sleep well, my child. I promise to play for you tomorrow.'_

"Yes, Erik," she bit back a sob, and squeezed his hand, "you tell us every night before… before going to sleep."

"Do you remember our wedding, Christine?" Erik asked, and Christine could only bite her tongue to suppress the heart-shattering weep that threatened to overcome her. Yes, she remembered their wedding, every single day of her life, whishing every single one of those seconds that things had gone different. "You were so beautiful in white. The Madelain will never have a more beautiful bride, nor a more devoted groom. It was perfect. We have the most perfect of lives, do we not?"

"Ye-Yes, Erik, it-it was…" she said, and had to let go of his hand to cover her weeps. She couldn't do this. "It was… the most lovely ce-ceremonies of them all."

"Christine?"

"Yes… my love?" she asked between gritted teeth. Her whole body trembled.

"Stay with me, my dear wife," Erik pleaded, "do not let our children come into the room, for I could never stand to see their hearts break at the sight of my weakness –listen, listen to how they laugh in the next room, happy and unaware, listen!-. Tell them I will not attend our Sunday stroll tomorrow."

"Of… Of course, hus-husband," she cried.

"I am tired… I will sleep for a while here…"

' _I love you, my child, come, I want to hold your hand. I feel so tired.'_

She squeezed his hand. She couldn't speak.

"But Christine?" he asked. His voice was a mere whisper. "Would you give me a kiss, my wife?"

And that was her undone. She could no longer hold back the weeps, nor the trmbles, nor the tears. She cried on her husband's chest the way she had cried on her father's the day he left her. Erik's free hand powerlessly tried to caress her hair. He tried to sing as well, but his beautiful voice was so broken that he could not finish the third sentence.

"I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry," she pleaded, "please, forgive me, Erik, for not being strong enough before, please!"

And she kissed him. She kissed his half-lips with all the love of her small heart, with all the sadness and all the pity that consumed her soul.

"I am sorry…" she whispered again against his lips.

"Stay with me, Christine. Please, do not leave your Erik alone yet. Stay at my side tonight, my love, as you have done in all our blissful years of marriage. Please, stay at my side."

And she did. That night, Christine stayed by Erik's side until his weak hand no longer held hers.

Before the sun came up and the roaring blizzard could pass, the Angel of Music had opened his wings and had left this Earth to fly among the other angels. To fly and to be loved on Heaven the way he never could be on Earth.

 **-0-**

 **Author's note:** Don't you hate it when you're like "Wow, I'm gonna write some hot smutty smut today;)!" and then you blink and _oops, you killed Erik. Again._? 'Cause it happens.

Not the best of my works, I'll admit, but it's a little thing to fight writer's block at 1 A.M. Enjoy and review:)


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